Gradual reduction
The Gradual reduction of the consumption without using nicotine plasters is not recommended by experts. But some people manage to undergo a withdrawal succesfully by this method. (It should be noted this passage is wrong, many experts say this method is vastly better than cold turkey. Cold turkey results in mostly relapse) The reason why this method is not very likely to be succesfull is, that the symptoms of the withdrawal depend on how much a person ist determined to get rid of the habit and how much the persons concentrates on the unpleasant feeling of the symptoms. Reducing the consumption of cigarettes means to plan to smoke a certain number of cigarettes a day. The problem on this is that the person constantly thinks about the number of cigarettes smoked and of the cigarettes that remain for the day. By doing so the person concentrates on his or her symptoms of nicotine withdrawal. An this means that the symptoms will get worse. If a person decides to quit smoking on a determined date and if the person is convinced about the time, he or she wil suffer from the symptoms nonetheless. But the person will not think about wether to smoke a cigarette or not and thus will not concentrate on the symptomps. If a person reduces the amount of cigarettes gradually and uses nicotine plasters in addition, it will be rather the same. The person will not think about the cigarettes already consumed and the remaining cigarettes. The plasters will give the needed nicotine, that will be reduced over the time. Theres no need to think about the cigarettes. Gradual reduction is a myth put over on the smoking community as a way to try to avoid the pain of quitting. The idea is that the amount of nicotine in the blood will be reduced and therefore the level of withdrawal, aka craving, will also be reduced, making it easier to fully quit. The problem with this method is that it causes each cigarette to become more precious in the smoker's mind since a smoker anticipates a cigarette if it has been some time since he smoked one. So each cigarette a smoker smokes with using the Gradual Reduction method actually strengthens the psychological addiction, the main part of nicotine addition. Killing the Nicotine monster: when a smoker understands that the feelings of withdrawal are the death pangs of the monster inside him that lives on nicotine, he will experience joy instead of dread during the first five days of quitting. The longer the monster is deprived, the sooner he will die and the smoker will be free of the physical addiction. The real problem is the mental addiction that is set up by a number of factors including: - society's beliefs about smoking and quitting that are incorrect - the smoker's illusionary belief that the cigarette gives him or her some genuine benefit - the boost that a smoker actually feels when he smokes, although he still has not reached the level he was at before he started smoking - the fact that the longer a smoker smokes the further down he is dragged into the well of destruction